The first use of the term "psychedelic rock" was on the business
card of the Texas-based band 13th Floor Elevators', designed by
John Cleveland, and circulated in December 1965. The term was first
used in print in the Austin Statesman in an article about the band
titled "Unique Elevators shine with Psychedelic Rock" , dated 10
February 1966 and theirs was the first album to use the term as
part of its title, in The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor
Elevators, released in August that year. Jeff Beck claimed that British rock act The Yardbirds were "the very first psychedelic
band really" releasing singles: "Shapes of Things", "Over Under
Sideways Down" and "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago"
in 1966.

Mid 1960s

United States

Psychedelia began in the United States' folk scene with New York City's Holy Modal Rounders introducing the term
in 1964 in its folk music of the first and second
album. Other early New York bands included The Fugs and The
Godz. A similar band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug
Champions from San Francisco were influenced by The Byrds and The
Beatles to switch from acoustic music to electric music in
1965. Renaming themselves the Warlocks, they fell in with Ken Kesey's LSD-fueled Merry Pranksters in November 1965, and
changed their name to the Grateful
Dead the following month. The Grateful Dead played to s at the
Pranksters' "Acid Tests", with pulsing
images being projected over the group in what became a widespread
practice.

Typical psychedelic style
poster.

Iron Butterfly at the Carousel Ballroom.

Their sound soon became identified as acid
rock, which they played at the first Trips
Festival in January 1966, along with Big Brother and the Holding
Company. The festival, held at the Longshoremen's Hall, was
attended by some 10,000 people. For most of the attendees, it was
their first encounter with both acid-rock and LSD. Another band
called The Ethix, which originally played R&B, started to experiment with electronics,
tape transformations and wild improvisations, and as their music
transformed, The Ethix transformed into Fifty Foot Hose.

Jefferson Airplane gained greater fame the following year with two
of the earliest psychedelic hit singles: "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to
Love". Both these songs had originated with the band The Great Society, whose singer
Grace Slick, left to join Jefferson
Airplane, taking the two compositions with her.

In 1966 The Beach Boys, with their
squeaky-clean image, seemed unlikely as psychedelic types. Their
music, however, grew more psychedelic and experimental, perhaps due
in part to writer/producer/arranger Brian
Wilson's increased drug usage and burgeoning mental illness. In
1966, responding to the Beatles' innovations, they produced their
album Pet Sounds and later that
year had a massive hit with the psychedelic single "Good Vibrations". Wilson's magnum opus
SMiLE (which was
never finished, and was remade by Wilson with a new band
in 2004), Smiley Smile and Wild Honey also shows this growing
experimentation.

Britain

A major difference between psychedelic rock in Britain and its
American counterpart is the role it played in a media revolution
that changed the face of musical broadcasting, the music business
and to a lesser degree, music publications nationwide.

This 'gate fold' record sleeve
features UV/stroboscopic photography.

Prior to the launch of BBC Radio 1 on 30
September 1967, BBC radio consisted of three stations. The Home
Service was devoted to news and current events (roughly equivalent
to today's Radio 4), the Third Programme covered classical music
etc. (equivalent to the modern Radio 3), and the Light Programme
carried popular entertainment, with very little aimed at teenagers
or younger listeners, having just two pop shows, Saturday
Club and Easy Beat. With the new stations, the Light
Programme was split into the chart-oriented Radio 1 for a younger
audience, and Radio 2 for more traditional popular entertainment.
These shows were ultra-conservative and almost (if not completely)
ignored the "progressive" or "underground" groups both from America
(Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Doors, Byrds etc.) and those in
England like Hawkwind, The Move, and The
Yardbirds. , which reached most of England, was a little more
progressive but still largely ignored the new music scene.

The only real exposure that these groups could get was live
performances in a handful of small clubs, mostly in London, with a
few in other major cities. The advent of Pirate Radio and in particular a pirate disc
jockey, John Peel, Ex Radio London of the
1960s changed all that. Suddenly these progressive bands were able
to reach a mass audience, and at their peak the pirates were
boasting greater audiences than the BBC. Adding to the impact and
impression of a cultural revolution was the emergence of
alternative weekly publications like IT (International Times) and OZ magazine which featured psychedelic and
progressive music together with the counter culture lifestyle.
Soon
psychedelic rock clubs like the UFO Club in
Tottenham Court
Road, Middle Earth Club
in Covent
Garden, The
Roundhouse in Chalk
Farm, the Country Club (Swiss Cottage) and the Art Lab (also in
Covent Garden) were drawing capacity audience with psychedelic rock
and ground-breaking liquid light
shows.

Psychedelic rock audiences were also a major break with tradition.
Wearing
long hair and wild shirts from shops like Mr Fish, Granny Takes a Trip and old military
uniforms from Carnaby
Street (Soho) and Kings
Road (Chelsea) boutiques, they were in stark contrast to the slick,
tailored Teddyboys or the drab,
conventional dress of most teenagers prior to that.

In December 1965, The Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album, marked the
beginning of the demise of their pop 'mop-tops' image. "Norwegian Wood", is one
of the first rock songs that used an Indian Sitar. The August 1966
album by The Beatles, Revolver, shows a psychedelic
influence with songs like "Tomorrow
Never Knows", "I'm Only
Sleeping", "Love You To" and
"Yellow Submarine". The Yardbirds released Roger the
Engineer in the same year. Jeff
Beck's experimentation with fuzz-tone,
feedback and distortion along with his
trademark note-bending style set a high standard for future
psychedelic experimenters. Hearing "Still I'm Sad" made Daevid Allen decide to form his first rock
band.

Eddie Phillips, guitarist of The Creation, developed the technique of
scraping a violin or cello bow across guitar strings to produce
surreal sounds during their live performances of the time. Jimmy Page later popularised this
technique.

Around the same time The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper,
another British group, The Bee Gees, were
recording their first international album. Upon returning to
England from Australia, they wrote and recorded their debut LP,
Bee Gees' 1st, which
contained such psychedelic songs such as "Every Christian Lion
Hearted Man Will Show You", "New York Mining Disaster 1941" and
"Turn of the Century". The Bee Gees continued throughout the
remainder of the 60s in the psychedelic/baroque rock style with
albums such as Horizontal, Idea and the classic
double album Odessa. After a 16 month break-up and
reunion, The Bee Gees reinvented their sound in a more R&B/Soul
style. Many rock critics consider the 1960s era Bee Gees as their
classic period.

1968 produced further innovative UK releases, ranging from the
sublime to the ridiculous. Tomorrow
recorded one of the most eccentric offerings of the season.
The Small Faces released one of
rock's first concept albums, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (at
least on side two), with its tale of Happiness Stan's search for
the missing half of the moon. "Itchycoo Park" was the first song to
use flanging - the effect discovered by British recording
engineer George Chkiantz in 1967. Odessey and Oracle by
The Zombies, which was recorded at Abbey
Road immediately after Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was the
first album to seriously feature the Mellotron, an innovation
brought about because they couldn't afford to pay for session
musicians. Meanwhile, The Moody
Blues went off In Search of the Lost Chord. As
Psychedelia had become more mainstream, many of the phenomenon's
originators were spending more and more time on extensive tours,
and further influencing the development of new groups all over the
globe.

Australia and New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand have long been overlooked in the history of popular
music, especially in relation to psychedelic rock and pop, although
it was a fertile region for recordings in this genre. One of
the main reasons for the relative obscurity of Australian
psychedelia was that few bands from the region had any significant
commercial success outside their home countries; the most notable
exception was The Easybeats, who
scored an international hit in late 1966 with their classic single
"Friday On My Mind" (which was in fact recorded in the UK).Another
limiting factor was that some of the best Australasian psychedelic
records were pressed in tiny quantities (sometimes as few as 250
copies) and very few ever gained significant overseas distribution
(if any). As a result, releases from these countries were for many
years known only to a small coterie of international music fans
and, not surprisingly, their rarity means that they now command
high prices on the collector's market. However, since the advent of
the CD and the re-release of many of these important recordings,
the original psychedelic rock of the 1960s from Australia and New
Zealand has gradually gained wider recognition, culminating in the
inclusion of a number of seminal tracks on the second volume of the
famous Nuggets series,
originated by US musician Lenny
Kaye.

Local musicians and producers were heavily influenced by
innovations in British and American psychedelic music, although,
for several reasons, British music had a somewhat stronger
influence. One major factor was that the EMI
company had long enjoyed the dominant market position in both
countries. Another influence was that many Australasian bands like
The Easybeats and The Twilights included members who were recent
immigrants from the UK. Also, it was common for many groups to
receive regular "care packages" from relatives and friends in
Britain, containing singles, albums, the latest Carnaby Street fashions and even off-air tape recordings of
British and European radio broadcasts. As a result,
considering the distance and travel times involved, local
Australian and New Zealand bands were kept remarkably up to date
with the latest trends. The Bee Gees
(then living in Australia) are known to have recorded cover
versions of Beatles songs like "Rain" and "Paperback Writer" within
days of the singles being released in the UK.

Several Australian groups traveled to the UK during this fertile
period -- The Easybeats went to London in late 1966, and around the
same time Australia's other leading pop band The Twilights won the inaugural Hoadleys
National Battle of the Sounds competition, enabling them to also
travel to the UK. As they were signed to EMI,
The Twilights were able to record at the legendary Abbey Road
during the period of the making of Sgt Peppers. On
returning to Australia in early 1967, they wowed audiences in
Melbourne by performing complete live renditions of the entire
Sgt Peppers album, weeks before it was even released in
the UK.

Although the standard of recording studios in Australia and New
Zealand lagged several years behind those in the UK and the USA,
local producers and engineers like Pat
Aulton kept in close touch with the latest overseas trends and
worked hard to fashion equivalent sounds for local acts, despite
many technical challenges (including the fact that Australia did
not get its first commercial 8-track studio until 1969). Local
producers and musicians created a significant body of psychedelic
recordings, and notable albums and singles recorded by
Australian/New Zealand acts in the late 1960s include:

"Friday On My Mind", "Land of Make Believe", "Heaven and Hell",
"Pretty Girl", "Peculiar Hole In The Sky" (The Easybeats)

Other countries

The invention of psychedelic music in the US quickly spread and was
followed all over the world. The first continental Europe band was
Group 1850, of The Netherlands, formed in 1964, first album in 1968. The
Brazilian psychedelic rock group Os
Mutantes formed in 1966, and although little known outside
Brazil at the time, their recordings have since accrued a
substantial international cult following. Erkin Koray, a famous TurkishAnatolian Rock artist
released his first psychedelic rock track Anma Arkadaş in
1967 and subsequently became a Turkish music legend. Many
Turkish bands followed his example and during the late 60's
psychedelic rock became very popular in Turkey.

In the late 1960s, a wave of Mexican rock heavily influenced by
psychedelic and funk rock emerged in several northern border
Mexican states, in particular in Tijuana, Baja California. Among
the most recognized bands from this "Chicano Wave" (Onda Chicana in
Spanish), there is one in particular that was recognized by their
originality. The band Love Army derived
from the Tijuana Five and was formed by Alberto Isiordia (aka El
Pajaro), Salvador Martinez, Jaime Valle, Fernando Vahaux, Ernesto
Hernandez, Mario Rojas and Enrique Sida.

From 1967 to 1973, between the ending of the government of
President Frei Montalva and the government of President Allende, a
cultural movement was born from a few Chilean bands that emerged
playing a unique fusion of folkloric music with heavy psychedelic
influences. The 1967 release of Los Mac's
album "Kaleidoscope men" inspired many bands such as
Los Jaivas and Los
Blops, the latter going on to collaborate with the iconic
Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara on
his 1971 album "El derecho de vivir en paz."

Meanwhile
in the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, a burgeoning psychedelic
scene gave birth to three of the most important bands in Argentine
Rock: Los
Gatos, Manal and perhaps most
importantly Almendra.
Almendra was fronted by Luis
Alberto Spinetta who penned most of the band's songs on their
two albums released in 1969 and 1970, drawing on a number of
influences including Blues, Jazz and Folk. Spinetta's first solo
release in 1971 "Spinettalandia y Sus Amigos - La Búsqueda de
la Estrella" is also notable for its strong psychedelic
influences. Spinetta has since gone on to enjoy a long and
successful career in Argentina.

A
thriving psychedelic music scene in Cambodia was pioneered by Sinn
Sisamouth and Ros
Sereysothea. In 1972, from Canada, Frank Marino's
Mahogany Rush, named for Marino's
experience while doing LSD, offered the album "Maxoom" in the
psychedelic genre. The title song Maxoom is another early
psychedelic song. The band followed this release with Child of the
Novelty in 1974. The cover art is an artists representation of
Marino's description of an acid trip.

A typical
psychedelic rock band emerged in Pakistan in 1985 by the name of Junoon. Junoon characteristically used
tabla and other folk instruments in their
albums. Because of the psychedelic nature and heavy sufi lyrics, the band was labeled as a sufi rock band
in their tours through out the world.

Late 1960s

Many of the bands that pioneered psychedelic rock had moved on to
explore other styles of music by the end of the 1960s. The
increasingly hostile political environment and the embrace of
amphetamines, heroin and cocaine by the
underground led to a turn toward harsher music. At the same time,
Bob Dylan released John Wesley
Harding and the Band released
Music from Big Pink, both albums that followed a roots-oriented approach. Many bands in England
and America followed suit. Eric Clapton
cites Music from Big
Pink as a contributory factor in quitting Cream, for example. The Grateful Dead who had been a strong force in
the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic scene also went back to basics and had
major successes with Workingman's
Dead and American
Beauty in 1970, then continued to develop their live music
and produce a long string of records over the next twenty-five
years.

Miles Davis released In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1969. These two releases
brought Jazz-Rock Fusion to the attention of the Flower-Power
generation, electrifying Jazz in the same way that Dylan had
electrified Folk music several years earlier. Acid jazz was another outgrowth of this musical
interaction. Within the rock camp, musical styles diverged between
wild progressive experimentation and back-to-roots fundamentalism,
but with an all-round increase in sophistication.

Woodstock
Music and Art Fair (Woodstock Festival) took place in August 1969 and
became one of the most celebrated events in Rock music history
which had notable performers such as Jimi Hendrix and
Santana. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, The second
Isle of Wright attracted notable performers such as Bob Dylan and
The Who.

The Flower Power era had inspired many new bands to experiment with
sound in ways that went beyond the fashion of the times. Despite
these set-backs, the psychedelic soup continued to bubble away.
Bubble Puppy's album A Gathering of
Promises demonstrates the degree of sophistication that
Psychedelic Pop had reached by the end of the '60s.

German band Can instantiated the
development of Krautrock with the release
of their Monster Movie album. Along with European
experimentalists Amon Düül
II, Ash Ra Tempel, Guru Guru, Harmonia, Neu! and
Xhol Caravan they incorporated
avant-garde composition techniques, improvisation and experimental
rhythms into their music. Neu!'s 'Motorik' beat was an influential
precursor to the drum-machine grooves of the '80s. Can's adoption
of World Music influences and particularly North African rhythms
lent releases such as Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, and
Future Days a particularly unique sound.

Other artists like David Vorhaus and
Delia Derbyshire pursued the
potential of new soundscapes made possible by the development of
electronic musical instruments, as the Silver Apples had done before them, in their
album of experimental electronica An Electric Storm -
released under the moniker of White
Noise. During the 1970s, pure synthesiser music would be
further developed by artists like Tangerine Dream and Tim
Blake.

In Brazil, Os Mutantes were drawn into
the Tropicália movement, while Santana adopted electrified Latin rhythms to
form the basis of their music on Abraxas and
Caravanserai.

In mid 1970, The Beatles announced that they had split up. All of
the remaining members went on to pursue solo careers. The groups
last studio album Let It Be went
straight to number one as did the singles "Let
It Be" and "The Long and
Winding Road".

Whereas American psychedelia was informed by radical politics and
the experience of war in Vietnam, British Psychedelia expressed
much more of a whimsical domesticity, a fascination with childhood
as a lost age of innocence and a hankering after the pastoral
idyll. Lyrical ideas were inspired by a healthy dose of fantasy
from the likes of Tolkien, Lewis Carrol and the Wind in the
Willows, and further modulated by the free availability of magic
mushrooms. As the 1970s progressed, Glam
rock, Heavy metal, Progressive rock, Folk and Jazz rock
styles took over the fashionable focus, but many artists still held
to Hippy ideals, producing some of their finest work in this
era.

The third Isle of Wight
festival took place over 5 days in August 1970. Jimi Hendrix,
Joan Baez, The Doors, The Who, Procol Harum, Tony Joe White and
Redbone were the main headliners. Hawkwind
played for free outside the gates in protest against ticket prices
and to promote their eponymous first album. Festivals became
regular fixtures during the British summers of the 1970s. The first
Glastonbury Festival was held in 1971 on a little farm in Somerset.
Hawkwind became champions of the Free Festival movement, playing at
Windsor Free Festival and subsequently regularly headlined
Stonehenge Free Festival. They released numerous albums: Doremi
Fasol Latido; In Search of Space; Space
Ritual; Warrior On The Edge Of Time; In The Hall
Of The Mountain Grill; Astounding Sounds Amazing
Music; and Quark Strangeness and Charm and were a
major influence in the development of Space
Rock and Heavy metal along
with High Tide and Blue Cheer. This period of Hawkwind's long
history is also notable for the particular contribution of Robert Calvert as vocalist and
lyricist.

Jimi Hendrix died in London in September, shortly after recording
Band of Gypsies and Janis Joplin Died of heroin overdose
in October 1970. The two were closely followed by Jim Morrison, who
died in Paris in July 1971. The Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll
lifestyle had started to take its toll.

Many of the musicians and bands that continued to embrace
psychedelia went on to create progressive rock in the 1970s, which
maintained the love of unusual sounds and extended solos but added
jazz and classical influences to the mix. For example, progressive
rock group Yes sprang out of three
British psychedelic bands: Syn (featuring Chris Squire), Tomorrow (featuring Steve Howe) and Mabel Greer's Toy
Shop (Jon Anderson). Also, psychedelic
rock strongly influenced early heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath. Psychedelic rock, with its
distorted guitar sound and adventurous compositions can be seen as
an important bridge between heavy metal and earlier blues oriented
rock.

In 1973, Pink Floyd released their epic
album, The Dark Side of
the Moon which would later be called by Rolling Stone
Magazine as "the Ultimate concept album". The Dark Side of the
Moon would spend a record breaking 14 years in the music
charts.

Psychedelia resurfaced in the work of other Progressive Rock acts
like Curved Air, King Crimson, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Pink
Floyd, Procol Harum, Quiet Sun, Supersister
and The Enid. The Moody Blues continued to develop their symphonic
themes over the course of several albums: A Question Of
Balance; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour; On The
Threshold of a Dream; Seventh Sojourn; and To Our
Children's Children. Traffic
also produced several classics of the genre during this time
including John Barleycorn Must Die and Shoot Out at
the Fantasy Factory.

Brian Eno released Here Come the Warm
Jets in February 1974, followed by Taking Tiger Mountain
By Strategy in November. Albums released by 801, Phil
Manzanera, Roy Wood and Wizzard during this time period also display strong
Psychedelic tendencies.

Albums released before the mid 1970s name change include:
Volunteers, B.A.R.K. and
Sunfighter.

The Grateful Dead took 1975 off from touring. The pressure of the
ever-expanding organization required to produce albums and deal
with the logistics of touring was getting out of hand. The "Wall of
Sound" PA that dominated live shows was stretching their resources
beyond endurable limits and forcing them to play bigger and bigger
halls. Notable albums from this period include: Europe
'72; Blues For Allah; and Terrapin
Station.

In November 1976 the Sex Pistols
released their first single, Anarchy in the UK. Some punk
and hardcore bands were influenced by psychedelic rock, such as The
Dead Kennedys. Their notorious song,
Holiday in Cambodia, has
flanging on the lead guitar riff and a psychedelic guitar solo.
Punk bands who drew on psychedelic rock either did so as parody or
out of a genuine affection for the music and an interest in
experimentation, which would continue in post-punk. Though Paisley Underground artists like
The Three O'Clock were rooted in
1960s psychedelia, they played it with an approach and energy that
was taken directly from punk. This was evidenced in playing it at
punk tempos and a fascination with punk
rock's roots in psychedelia and garage
rock. Psychedelic rock also influenced garage punk of the 1980s onwards.

Roland released the first programmable drum machine, the CR-88 and
the DR55 in the following year.

Gryphon released their last album
Treason and were then dropped by EMI to make way for the
Sex Pistols.

Sandy Denny died aged 31 of a cerebral haemorrhage, after falling
down a flight of stairs on 21 April .

British band XTC made a number of recordings in
the late 1980s which both parodied and affectionately imitated the
sound and form of late Sixties psychedelic rock. Released under the
pseudonym The Dukes of
Stratosphear and produced by former Abbey Road engineer
John Leckie, the EP 25 O'Clock (1985) and the LP Psonic Psunspot (1987) employ all of
the classic songwriting and production features of the style. XTC
leader Andy Partridge has claimed that he always wanted to play in
a psychedelic band.

In the mid-eighties and early nineties The Flaming Lips (and later, Mercury Rev) played psychedelic guitar rock, but
by the late nineties both bands had largely abandoned an electric
guitar-effects driven sound, instead incorporating orchestral and
electronica influences into their music. Phish, a jam band active from
the early 1980s, played psychedelic rock with a strong jazz influence, utilizing elaborate modal melodies and
complex rhythmic accompaniment.

In Australia in the 1980s, bands such as The Tripps, Prince Vlad & the
Gargoyle Impalers, and most notably Tyrnaround and The Moffs,
explored and reinvigorated the psychedelic genre. Japan has had a
rich history of psychedelic music, dating back to the 1960s.
Starting with the "Group Sounds"
movement, which mainly included psychedelic-garage acts, such as
The Mops and most notably . The 1970s
introduced the element of sonic experimentation and noise
manipulation into the realm of Japanese psychedelic rock, with
groups like Les Rallizes
Denudes, Fushitsusha, Kousokuya, and the Faust inspired Magical Power Mako emerging from
the Japanese underground. The 1980s brought with it Japan's first
record label dedicated to folk, noise, experimental, and most
prominently, psychedelic music -- PSF
Records. Rising from the Japanese noise underground, Acid Mothers Temple mix the subtle
resonance of Blue Cheer, the Grateful Dead's psychedelic sound, the
thought-provoking melodies of French folk, and concrete bursts of noise that run
through music of Boredoms.

Beginning
in the late 1980s, travelers, musicians, and artists from around
the world formed a new form of psychedelic music in the Indian
state of Goa.
Initially called Goa trance, this
psychedelic music was the result of mixing the 1960s influences
with industrial music and electronica. Popular hard rock artists also made
several psychedelic songs, including R.E.M.
and Prince, who released several
Psychedelic-styled records including Around the World in a
Day.

Massive Attack with their album
Blue Lines are credited with creating the
new sub-genre trip hop or Bristol Sound which feature a more
meditational sound than Hip-hop which they
are associated with.A later album Mezzanine feature "eerie atmospherics,
fuzz-tone guitars, and a wealth of effects" on many tracks.They
influenced The Gathering along
with shoegazing artists such as Slowdive especially since their album How to measure a planet?.They
called their new approach to their rock music Trip rock.Trip rock has also been used to describe
groups like Unkle who are a collaboration of
musicians featuring Trip-hop DJ's including James Lavelle and also a leader in the
development of U.S. trip-hop DJ Shadow and
rock musicians from various genres.Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack also
featured in the later works by the collaboration.

A new British psychedelic scene also re-emerged amongst the London
electronica movement in the late 1990s,
giving birth to bands like desert
rockers MJ13, where the British interpretation of the Kyuss influx showed more psychedelic sensibilities
than the American Stoner rock sound was
originally attributed to.

In 2006 The Black Angels released
their debut album Passover, which brought back a very heavy drone
sound fused with 60's psychadelia.

In 2006, John Gourley of Anatomy of a Ghost started the band
Portugal. The Man. Portugal. The Man fuzzed the elements of
Psychedelic, Soul, Pop, Funk, Blues, and Southern Rock. Their live
shows also utilized elements of Progressive and psychedelic
rock.